Unsurprisingly, Robin hadn't slept well at all.

Well… 'hadn't slept well' implies that she got at least a couple of winks in. The truth was, she had not slept. Not for a moment. She tossed and turned, eyes wide open staring into darkness, replaying every moment from the night before, over and over and over again in her mind, wondering what she should have said, what she could have done, to prevent all of it.

You should have just kept it all inside, she thought. Just pushed everything down, no matter how justified you felt in your pain, your anger, your hurt. You should have just kept your mouth shut and buried it. Buried every last piece until everything stopped hurting so much.

It's what you're best at, isn't it, Robin?

"Robin? Are you awake?" Nami asked in a soft voice, noticing Robin hadn't gotten up to get dressed yet. Or moved much at all from her position in bed. She had figured Robin (who had been turned away from her all morning) was still sleeping or resting as she was getting ready, not knowing that she was wide awake, staring at the wall as if it would give her the answers she needed.

Robin debated whether or not to pretend she was sleeping for a while longer before finally replying. "Mm," was all she could muster.

"Oh! Good, so I didn't wake you," Nami was just about ready to go. "Are you coming to breakfast? Apparently the place downstairs is really good. Everyone's already down there."

"Not this morning, no," she mumbled, too distracted to even come up with an excuse. The thought of seeing Sanji so soon after… well, it made her physically recoil.

"Oh…" Nami figured she just must've had a late night, and a lot of red wine. "Well, no worries, there's always tomorrow. I'll bring a plate back up, okay? See you in a bit!"

As Nami made her way to the hotel restaurant, her mind was buzzing with every single possible way she could approach the subject of Sanji with Robin. Hey, girlie… so… sleeping with anyone lately? Gross, no. You and Sanji… want to talk about him? Anything you feel like you need to say? Or have on your chest? Also no. If you did start sleeping with someone, like say… someone we both knew… you'd want to talk about it, right? With me? Right? Definitely no.

She sighed as she took a seat at the table. This'll be a tough nut to cra—

"Nami."

She jumped a bit, so deep in thought she hadn't even realized she sat right next to Luffy, at the very end of the table. Rest in peace to half my plate, she thought.

"Luffy."

"Where'd you go?" he said, stuffing an entire waffle in his mouth. "Also, what're you getting?"

"I literally just sat down, I don't know yet," she said, glancing at the menu. "And where did I go when?"

"Last night."

"Not that it's any of your business, but I was with Lucas. He was showing me around the city."

"Who?"

She sighed. "The lead actor from the play, dummy. You met him."

"Oh. Yeah."

As she looked down at her menu, she could feel his eyes bearing down on her again, much like how they had at breakfast that one morning when he decided to embarrass her in front of the whole crew.

"How come you like that play so much?" he said finally. "It was SO boring. And there was SO much kissing."

"Well, yes, obviously. It's a romance, that's part of the appeal." The waiter came by to take her order, and she decided on the candied bacon cinnamon buns.

"Those sound good." He was already eyeing he spot in front of her where her cinnamon buns would soon be.

"They sure do." Can't wait to only eat a fraction of the ones I ordered, she thought.

"What's so great about kissing, anyway?" he asked after another pause.

This question didn't phase her; he had asked about things like this (displays of affection and intimacy) before that he didn't understand. "Well, it feels nice, I guess. It's intimate and warm and… I don't know, it's hard to explain."

"Oh." Another pause. "Well, show me."

Nami nearly spit out her complimentary water. "WHAT?" she said in hushed fury, frantically looking around the table to make sure no one else heard this. Thankfully, everyone else seemed to be doing their own thing and she was spared another bout of embarrassment.

"You just said you can't explain it, so show me. I wanna know, too," he said, mouth full of bacon.

"Absolutely not. And stop talking about this so loudly!"

"Why not?" he replied, ignoring her plea.

"Because it's for people who are… romantically interested in each other."

"Oh. Well, how am I supposed to figure out what it's like, then?"

"I guess you'll just have to wait until you find someone you're romantically interested in."

"How do I know when I find that?" he asked, wiping orange juice from his face with the back of his hand.

"Well, it's different for everyone, but… generally… you think about them all the time, you always wonder what they're doing, what they're thinking about… you always want to be near them… your heart races when they are close to you… constantly find yourself looking at them, watching them… you care a lot about what they think of you… everything about them interests you. You'd do anything for them."

To Nami's great surprise, Luffy actually… stopped eating. He seemed to lean in closer to her with every sentence as she described those feelings. He must have used the hotel soap, she thought. He smelled like bergamot. Bergamot mixed with his normal scent of sea salt and sandalwood. It was… nice. Really nice. He sat and stared at her for a long time, right in the eyes, as he chewed and swallowed the last of the food in his mouth. And then he stared some more.

"When the hell's that supposed to happen?" he said finally.

"I don't know, Luffy. Considering it's you, maybe never?"

"That's no fair."

"Life rarely is."

There was another pause as Luffy went back to eating.

"Hey, how did you know I was gone last night?" Nami continued.

"Mm? Oh," this time his mouth was full of maple sausage. "I was lookin' for you."

Nami raised an eyebrow. "Why?"

"I was gonna show you something."

"Show me what…?"

"It's a surprise." He grinned as he reached up and tousled the hair at the top of her head.

Nami wasn't sure what to think. He couldn't have actually been planning something… nice, could he? Surely not. This is Luffy we're talking about here, she thought. He probably just wanted to show her a weird lizard he'd caught, or something.

Nevertheless, she was at least a tiny bit intrigued.

"Hey, where's Robin?" he asked.

"She didn't want to come to breakfast today."

He shrugged it off without a single comment or question. He'd always been like that when it came to what Robin wanted (or didn't want) to do. Come to think of it, he never really questioned any of the crew when they expressed something that others might have pried into, or sought to dissuade. He was very accepting. It was a nice quality. Nami had always thought so.

Speaking of Robin, though…

"Luffy, how do you… find it so easy to just… come out and say or ask whatever it is you're thinking of?" This might have been a fruitless endeavor, but if there ever was a time or place Nami needed his advice, it was in this exact area. It was one of his few areas of expertise.

"Why wouldn't I do that?" he replied, puzzled. "Worst thing that could happen is the person says no or doesn't wanna answer. No big deal." He quickly shoved 3 pieces of toast in his mouth. "Don't see the point in being scared to say stuff, either. Seems like a waste. Just say whatever you want. Sometimes I say stuff and you hit me, but I don't regret saying it. Not really. 'Cause I got to say what I wanted to say."

Nami blinked. This was… actually… kind of…

Wise?

Fractured, sporadic, disjointed, yes. But there was a nugget of profundity in there.

Her cinnamon buns arrived, and Luffy was positively drooling as he leered at them.

With a sigh, she shifted her plate towards him. "Do you wa—"

"Thanks, Nami!" and he immediately took two, scarfing them down.

Nami came back up to the room with a plate of eggs benedict for Robin, but Robin was nowhere to be found.

.

.

Robin was determined to spend the rest of their stay in town without speaking to anyone, no matter how long it took Franky to fix the Sunny. Sure, she wasn't likely to succeed, but she was going to do her damnedest. She already had a plan: she'd explore the hotel and the city on her own all day, and make sure she didn't come back to her room until everyone she could think of was asleep. Not foolproof, but good enough.

So, she spent the next few days doing just that, and it seemed to be working out pretty well. Until today, when she stayed in the hotel's library for a bit too long.

She was on the floor, in a corner hugging her knees, softly crying, as she often was as of late, when someone came in.

"This isn't the bar…" her green-haired companion mumbled to himself. "Oh. Robin. I wa—"

Robin looked up at him, unable to wipe the tears away fast enough.

"I uh… Sorry." He immediately turned to leave, but stopped at the door, Robin's sniffling ringing out in the silence. He took a sharp breath inward, shutting his eyes tight as he craned his head up at the ceiling.

"Fuck," he said sharply in a hushed tone, his eyes shooting open. He turned back around and approached her. "Is this…"

"This isn't about you, don't worry."

He breathed a sigh of relief before sliding down the wall next to her, knees up like hers. Without a word, and without looking over at her, he took a flask from his hip and held it out to her.

She quickly snatched it out of his hands and started to drink, without a single worry or thought about what might be inside.

Zoro glanced at her and raised an eyebrow, but opted not to comment.

"I think I've made a mistake," she began, handing the flask back to him.

"Join the fuckin' club, eh?" he replied, taking a swig of his own.

For the first time in days, she cracked a tiny, fleeting smile. "But at the same time… I feel like part of what I've done… was justified. Because I've been hurt. That feeling is real. I… don't know what to do with these two competing feelings. I don't know what to say to fix everything, and at the same time to express this… visceral… pain. Pain that isn't self-inflicted. Pain that they had a part in." She could feel another bought of tears coming on, and she tightly shut her eyes, desperate to stop them.

"And I feel like… I don't have the… fortitude to carry on the way we have been, if this is the kind of pain it will bring me. So, in that respect… was it really a mistake? I don't know. And no matter what they say in protest, I can't shake this feeling that nothing will change, and the pain will keep coming back. And I can't. I just can't do it anymore. But another part of me… desperately wants to, regardless of all that."

She wiped more tears away, sniffling. "I don't know. I'm sure this is all nonsense to you."

Zoro sat quiet for a moment as he handed the flask back to her before finally speaking up. "You're smart, Robin. Smartest person I know. But you get in your own goddamn way a lot."

Robin looked over at him, slightly confused.

"All I'm hearing is, 'what if they do this' and 'what if I can't do that,'" he began. "Well, what if you sit around like this not doing a goddamn thing about it for the rest of your life, still wondering 'what if'? What the fuck are you gonna do then?" He stopped for a moment to take the flask back.

"Look, I don't exactly know what the fuck it is you're talking about with that all this shit, but mistakes can be fixed. That goes for both of you. But, shit, you have to get out of your own head and at least try."

"I'm afraid," she said quietly.

"Yeah, no shit," he quickly replied. "You know, I meant what I said that time, when I said I respect the shit out of you. You're fucking strong. Brave. Braver than this. And yeah, it's scary. Yeah, there's a risk that everything goes wrong. But maybe it doesn't."

A pause that wasn't long, but sure felt like it, rang in the air. "Be the Robin I came to respect over the years, yeah?" He punctuated this by delivering a soft whack to her knee with the back of his hand. Contact so rare that it made Robin jump a little. "Take the fucking chance."

Robin sat in silence, dumbfounded. She had always known that Zoro was very sharp, and a lot smarter than the rest of the crew gave him credit for (likely due to his complete lack of directional competence…). He'd always had a way of cutting right to the heart of a matter: concise, a little tactless, firm and true.

But this was Zoro being more profound than she'd ever heard him be. Hell, she'd never even heard him speak for this long before.

"Thank you," she said finally in a quiet, almost timid voice as she met his eyes.

"Yeah, sure." And he rose to leave.

Once he was at the door, he stopped just short of it once again, and turned to look at her. "Do you, uh, know where the bar is from here?"

She lightly laughed to herself as she stood. "It's ah… a bit hard to find." It really, really wasn't. "I'll take you."

.

.

It was their last evening in town, and Nami had chosen to spend it with Lucas, as she had most days and evenings.

Robin had been almost completely MIA; she'd be gone before Nami woke up and not back by the time she turned in for the night. It was obvious Robin was avoiding everyone, but Nami couldn't exactly figure out why. It couldn't have been that Robin figured out that Nami knew about her and Sanji, right? No, that couldn't be… Nami thought she had done a pretty good job of hiding it so far. The very, very few times she had been able to catch Robin and attempt to start the conversation, it had always started out innocently enough before Robin made an excuse to leave. She thought maybe Robin was just off with Sanji somewhere, that was a distinct possibility. But there was something off… something that made Nami think it was possible, but not likely. Something she couldn't quite put her finger on.

"…Nami? Everything alright?"

"Mm? I—sorry, what were you saying?"

"I was just saying that woman is wearing multiple counterfeits of items from the boutique up the road. You can see it from a mile away."

Right, Nami thought as she snapped back to the present. Nami and Lucas were sitting at the fountain in the town square, doing some people watching. "Ah. Sorry. I've just been… thinking about a friend of mine. Just a bit worried about them."

Concern came across Lucas' face. "I can take you back to yours, if you'd li—"

"No!" She immediately exclaimed before clearing her throat and trying to sound more measured. "I mean, please don't. I really like spending time with you."

He grinned. "Glad to hear it. I've really enjoyed my time with you, y'know. You're really something. Smart, interesting, charming… beautiful, really." He looked her deep in the eyes, his grin turning into a soft smile.

Nami flushed pink. "That's… wow… um… you think I'm… hah, thanks." Once again, Nami was not used to being the flustered one in these situations. But here he was, putting her on her back foot.

"You've got a little something in your hair," he said, looking up at the top of her head.

Panicked, Nami turned to look at him. "Shit, wher—"

Just as she turned to him, he leaned in and kissed her.

Nami's eyes were wide open and she completely froze. Wake the hell up, Nami! she pleaded with herself. This is exactly what you wanted!

She shut her eyes and tried to lean into the kiss, but then, for some reason, for some ungodly reason…

Luffy's big dumb idiot face flashed in her mind.

It startled her so much that she pulled away immediately. "Ah… hah… um…"

"You okay?" he looked genuinely concerned.

"Yes. Yep. Mmhm! Right as rain. Never better. There was… I think there was a bee. At my ear," she lied. "Let's try again. I'm ready. And bee-less."

He chuckled as he leaned in again, his soft lips just grazing hers and then—

"NAAAAMIIIII," Luffy called out as he ran up to the couple. "THERE you are. I've been lookin' all over for you."

"Luffy, I'm kind of in the middle of something, her—"

"C'mon, I gotta take you to the thing."

"What thing?"

"You know, the thing from before. The surprise."

"Does it need to be right this second?!" she said through clenched teeth.

"Yep."

"Can't it wait?"

"Nope. Let's go!" With that, he grabbed her hand and yanked her up and away from Lucas.

"I'll uh… be back later!" she called out to a bewildered Lucas as she stumbled away. "You know where to find me!"

She furiously glared at the back of Luffy's head. "This had better be fucking good."

"You're not gonna trick me into ruining the surprise."

Nami rolled her eyes and the two continued to travel, mostly in silence, though occasionally Luffy would hum a tune or make up a little song about their surroundings or what they were doing. Nami had always found it kind of… charming when he did that.

Wait. No, she didn't. She was mad at him right now. Quit it, she told her brain. What the hell was going on with her today?

She looked down at her hand and she turned pink. "You don't have to keep holding my hand. I can follow you."

"Hm?" Luffy looked back, seemingly not even noticing that he had been doing that. "Yeah, if you want. Just don't be slow, or I'll drag you along again." And he let her go.

They were at the far outskirts of town, now, its lights far behind them, barely a twinkle. "How much further?" she asked as she huffed and puffed.

"Not much. Actually, close your eyes."

"How am I supposed to see where I'm going?"

"I'll help you. Close 'em."

She sighed, but did as she was told. True to his word, he grabbed her hand again and lead her along.

"No peeking!"

"I'm not!"

He lead her just a little further, to (what felt like) the top of a hill, and then they came to a stop. "Okay, you can open them now."

Her eyes fluttered open, and she softly gasped.

He had taken her to an orchard. But it was an orchard unlike anything she had ever seen before. It was full of a bioluminescent fruit that she was unfamiliar with, as far as the eye could see. It was absolutely stunning.

"I knew you'd like it!" Luffy exclaimed. "I mean, you do like this kinda stuff, right? All the trees and stuff, with the fruit."

"I love it," she whispered. She was so floored she felt she could no longer stand, so she collapsed onto the grassy hill, with Luffy following suit and flopping down next to her.

"How did you find this place?" she asked in wonderment. "It's so far out."

"Heh, well, technically Zoro did. He got lost out here and I came and found him."

She softly laughed. "Sounds like Zoro alright."

There was a long, comfortable silence between them as they both took in the soft light, a mix of teal and violet.

"Hey, Nami."

"Mm?"

"Remember how you said kissing was warm and nice and… some other word?"

"Intimate. It means… close."

"Ohhh," he said, finally knowing the meaning of that mysterious word. "Well, yeah, remember that?"

"I do."

"I was thinking. It sounds like the time you slept in my bed."

She swallowed, heat rising to her face as she looked over at him. He was still staring out at the orchard.

"You know, warm and nice and, well, now I know, close."

Their shoulders were touching.

"If that's what kissing is like," he leaned his head back, tilting it to his left to face her and smiled wide, looking her right in the eyes. "I guess I can see why people like it. Must not be so bad."

"They're… I mean… it's not quite… well… it's more like… um…" Her hand grazed his and she immediately pulled it towards herself.

She released the breath she was holding. "Sure, Luffy," she said finally with a warm smile in return for his. "Yeah."

.

.

A/N: Sometimes I get pretty stuck writing and I just don't know where to start, but for whatever reason this chapter just came right out! A little more LuNa for ya'll (they're very fun to write!).